


Lost Paradise

by LadyBergamot



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Before the romance, F/M, Fire Emblem Writers Zine, First time they meet, pre-War of the Heroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27376030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyBergamot/pseuds/LadyBergamot
Summary: After Sothis went into deep slumber, her children were left to roam Fodlan - lost and alone as they grapple with the changing times. For Cichol, the scars of ages past never quite healed, so he returns to the city where it all began.This piece was written for the Fire Emblem Writers' Zine. Special thank you to @/abby_coppage on twitter for the wonderful collaboration experience!
Relationships: Seteth/Seteth's Wife (Fire Emblem)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13
Collections: Fire Emblem Writer's Zine





	Lost Paradise

The fields outside Enbarr’s walls were surprisingly silent. Cichol trod through the sea of grass, letting his fingers brush against the taller weeds as he made his approach. 

Somewhere in the distance, human farmers were hard at work. The sound of their hoes and scythes sliced through the gentle breeze. At the height of summer, the commons would be lined with peasants readying the fields for watering and planting. There was much work to be done in the months preceding harvest, but Cichol always found peace in the endlessness of such simple and honest work.

But he didn’t come here for them, and neither did he travel to the flourishing city to join in their mortal toils. His chest pulled taut at the sight of the city gates, bristling with memories he thought he had buried away.

“Good day,” greeted a village girl walking by. 

Cichol nodded his head. “Good day,” he said, pausing to reply. He let out a sigh of relief when she went along her merry way, clearly unfamiliar with who he was beneath the travelers’ robes.

The path up the gate was a long one, but the portcullis’s towering heights nevertheless imposed on the horizon. His mind drifted to the last time he had been there centuries before. The world was a much different place then, when fire and brimstone colored the horizon. The death rattle of hundreds and thousands, lost to the peril of human ambition, still rang in his ears. Sothis might have healed the world, but other wounds were left in her wake. 

Now, lost to deep sleep, her children were left to roam and protect what was left of civilization, but Cichol never could stop roaming. Peace was its own nightmare, and nothing but the sights of blissfully unaware humans who would live and die before the century’s end could settle the strain of his years.

“Beg your pardon, milord,” called out the same girl, “but are you alright?” Much to his surprise, she never left and had snuck up on him in the middle of his reverie. She waved over to him with her free hand as she carried a basket of berries on the other. 

“Yes thank you,” he answered, discomposed by her unsolicited attention. He adjusted his cloak and presumed a more domineering countenance. 

Undaunted, the girl smiled back at him. “Here sir,” she said, plucking a handful of berries from her basket, “they’re sweetest this time of year.” The berries tumbled down her hand onto his palm. 

Ripened to a dark bluish hue, Cichol was surprised to find his eyes so… _keen_ on such treats.

“These help cool the planters off,” she explained with an unceasing smile. “Please take more!”

Cichol withdrew his hand and quickly buried the snack into a sleeve pocket. “I thank you,” he said, though not without some awkwardness. 

He tipped his hood and gestured to the gates. “I best be on my way now.” The Nabatean in disguise nodded before making his abrupt exit. Continuing on the path, he dared not turn back to glance at the peasant girl, whose gaze fixed on him, piqued with interest.

* * *

The priest held his hands high in the air and bowed his head in solemn prayer.

“The goddess is all things. She is heaven above and land below…”

Cichol hugged the walls near the entrance, passing through columns as colorful light filtered through stained glass windows. 

“She is eternity incarnate. She is the present, the past, and the future…”

The parishioners folded their hands together and mimed the chant, filling the church with a bellow of voices lost to the ancient stones of Enbarr. Cichol scanned the crowd and searched for a trace — _a_ _ny_ trace — of the old days. He recalled when throngs of the poor and indigent would file for Seiros’s blessings, awed by the spectacle of her miracles. But there was a difference now.

“Her eyes see all. Her ears hear all. Her hands receive all…”

The priest raised his head to the domed ceiling above and lifted his hands higher. A smile crept on his face, and he pronounced with affected gravitas the pivotal words of their prayer: “She who was graced with the holy word of the divine goddess, who bore witness to her magnificence, is the one called Seiros.”

Cichol’s brows furled when he recalled the last time Seiros performed ‘miracles’ in this very church. It wasn’t a church then. It was a pile of rubble. Now, the very walls were gilded with gold, and the floors were marbled, brandishing the newfound wealth that the Church had acquired as of late. 

_‘Humans,’_ Cichol thought, furling his lip with disapproval. He puffed up his chest and crossed his arms, barely cognizant of the ongoing prayer service.

“Don’t let them catch you,” a faint whisper cut through his thoughts.

Cichol whipped around, startled by the now familiar stranger who had accosted him with sweet berries outside the city gates hours before. 

The girl was veiled now, donning a thin shawl of linen over her head as she held a prayer-like stance. Her eyes were brazenly fixed on him, and there was a coy smirk on her face. Perhaps, Cichol speculated, she found his sacrilegious behavior amusing.

She pressed her hands firmer together and nudged him with her shoulder, gesturing for him to follow her example. 

Puzzled, Cichol turned from her to the crowd. While the church-goers were devout, he finally noticed the priest’s menacing glance, no doubt irked at this stranger’s stubborn disobedience. The Nabatean let out a tired sigh and did as he was told, but the surly pout nevertheless stayed on his lips as he faked his way through the rest of the service.

Next to him, the girl giggled softly and closed her eyes. With her new friend now in the clear, she focused instead on her own devotions — praying and wishing in the privacy of her thoughts. 

“I wasn’t aware participation was required,” Cichol scoffed under his breath.

Again, the girl giggled. “Don’t be harsh on them, milord,” she spoke softly. “Prayer brings them comfort.”

He raised a brow at her words. _‘Them?’_ He kept a stern yet nevertheless tightlipped scowl on his face as he mulled it over.

Still another chuckle flitted from her lips. It seemed she had read him completely, for she dared another upward glance at him and whispered, “We are all lost without the goddess, so we cling to what we can.” Her words trailed off in the more deafening echo of the service’s chant.

Cichol kept his eyes on the priest and his hands folded together. A light and airy sort of sadness seemed to carry over from her words. For once, since leaving his abode and returning to Enbarr, the bitterness that had welled in his chest washed over until nothing but longing was left. Longing for what, exactly? 

His eyes darted to and fro, scanning the church for meaning he couldn’t seem to find. The stained glass depictions of Seiros and Sothis littered the place, but not even such recollections of the past touched on the strained feeling pulling like a band at his chest. But his thoughts nevertheless drifted back to the human girl next to him and her… peculiar words. _“Prayer brings them comfort,”_ she had said. 

In the most unexpected of turns, Cichol closed his eyes and ‘prayed.’ His mind blanked to nothing but faint memories of the soft grass beneath his fingers and of laughter ringing in the halls of his family’s villa in Zanado. They had tall gardens then, vines and lilies hanging on trellises while the sound of water trickled from their marble fountains. He thought of the soft glance of Sothis whenever she tended to those flowers. Sothis, progenitor “goddess,” but most of all… _‘mother.’_

Cichol’s brows furled. The sharp ringing of bells pulled him back to the present, and the dismal solemnity of the church’s gray walls robbed his imagination of all its pleasant color.

Next to him, the girl was still in silent prayer, smiling to herself. Perhaps there _was_ comfort to be had, after all.

* * *

To Cichol’s surprise, the bustle of the market was pleasantly loud. All around him merchants heckled from their stalls, boasting fair prices for passable goods. The smell of oil burned through the air, faintly reminiscent of spiced meats while the nearby stink of the butchers added to the heady mix. Cichol waded as best as he could, following behind the strange village girl, who tugged him by the arm as she rushed him past the crowds. 

“Jocasta makes _the best_ grilled herring!” she chirped mid-sprint. “Come! Her stall is not that far!”

He struggled to keep his hood over his head all the while keeping apace. The church service had ended mere minutes before, but already she assumed a bubbly familiarity with him that wasn’t _all_ too unwelcome. Now here he was: navigating the rather new and strange labyrinth that had become Enbarr’s streets.

“What are you waiting for?” she asked, eyes brightening as she handed him a skewer of grilled red herring. “Try it!”

They stopped close to the fish market. The air was thick with the offending stench of pickled and salt-dried fish, mixed with the even more pungent waft of the city’s filth. 

Cichol winced when she raised the skewer closer to her nose. It _looked_ inedible — wiry, charred thing on a stick, but he’d be lying if the cooked food’s smell wasn’t a welcome reprieve from the other… odors of Enbarr. The corner of his mouth twisted with a tired sigh.

“If you insist,” he said, maintaining his noble veneer. 

The girl beamed as she watched him take a hesitant bite. He was slow at first — repulsed, even. Yet Cichol’s face smoothed over the moment he chewed, and soon the Nabatean had all but devoured the grilled herring.

“This is…”

“Delicious, isn’t it?!” she cut in excitedly. The girl practically bounced on the ball of her feet as she eagerly bit into her skewered herring. “Jocasta’s secret,” she said in between bites, “is the sea salt. She gets it from up north… in the Rhodos Coast.”

Cichol raised a brow. “That’s quite a distance,” he remarked blithely, “and too risky for a mere street vendor.”

Without looking at him, the girl gave a wan smile and kept to herself, seemingly amused by his powers of observation. “You’re right about that.”

“There is a mountain pass that blocks the roads from Enbarr,” he continued, staring absently at his near-finished grilled herring. “And after that, the bogs of Teutates… Most merchants trade by ship along the eastern coast, and even then, the cost of shipment is beyond any street vendor’s means.”

“You must be well-traveled, milord,” she replied. “Not everyone can name a single county outside of Enbarr here, let alone such far-off places. I envy you.”

Cichol frowned at her otherwise flimsy attempt at deflection. “I only find it curious.” His tone went on the defensive. The skewer hovers in his hand as his eyes drifted back to the hustle and bustle of the marketplace. “You must be well-traveled yourself,” he added with a huff. “By all accounts, you appear a commoner of Enbarr and yet can name ‘far-off places’ like the Rhodos Coast.”

To that, she laughed. Her hand fanned over her mouth, as if masking the mischief prowling about behind her feigned innocence. 

An awkward impasse befell the two, and they ambled aimlessly in the silence. Somehow, Cichol’s appetite vanished with the conversation, and he found himself tossing the skewer once they passed a nearby heap. Next to him, the girl still smiled to herself, averting his gaze all the while distracting herself with the commotion of market-goers and hecklers that flooded the streets.

“I must thank you for your time, but I—…”

“Where are you headed next?”

At first they gaped. Cichol blushed and straightened his collar. The girl fidgeted with her apron as she smoothed over the awkward interjection with a pout of her lip.

“Pardon me, you—”

“I’m sorry, you go—” 

Again, they started and stopped. Cichol straightened his posture to clear his throat. The girl, meanwhile, shot him a more light-hearted glance. She let out a soft chuckle, patiently biting on her lip as a cue for him to go first.

Cichol shot her a stern look, not out of malice or frustration, but plain _curiosity._ Her tightlipped deflections aside, her manner was not like most commoners’. Her expressions and gestures were light and, most of all, _deliberate_ , like the wilful guile of a practiced courtier. Not to mention, her own inexplicable interest in _him_ was not without its own cause for concern. She tailed him since he had entered the city, and for a Nabatean-in-hiding, prolonged attention was the last thing he needed.

“Your name,” he started up. His tone was clipped and professional, and the stern furl of his brow was not any less severe. “I don’t believe I caught your name.”

She fixed him a wry and curious sort of look, and, in a second, the quaint village charm of her prior demeanor vanished into something a little cooler. She still had on that polite smile, but nothing about it was readable at all.

“I never told you, milord,” she answered candidly. Her brown eyes then peer up at him, watching expectantly as if she had given him a satisfactory answer.

“Tell me now,” he commanded. Cichol bit back regretfully, somewhat surprised by his own surliness. 

The girl maintained the same wry expression, but something else lit up in her eyes. She tilted her head, cat-like in her inquisitive gaze. “But you haven’t told me yours either, milord.”

Cichol bit down so fast he nearly flinched from the sting of his sharp teeth puncturing his tongue. His arms flattened rigidly against his side, and he leaned ever slightly so as to belie his own reeling disbelief. Somehow the Nabatean, otherwise eloquent if not succinct, found himself at a loss for words. He hemmed at first, his jaw hanging low before closing with impatience. 

“I see,” was all he could manage. He tried to think more on it. He tried to ponder the mystery, enticing as it was. But for all her puzzling quirks, she was only human after all. It shone in the way she bristled with impatience, waiting for him to take the bait of her provocation. Cichol scoffed under his breath and decided that, in the end, this would have only been a waste of his time. “Well then, I really must be on my way—”

“Wait!”

Her hand shot up and gripped his sleeve. It was a violent tug, enough to pull down his cloak and reveal the bright green strands of his hair. Cichol’s other hand reflexively shot up and seized her by the wrist.

“You would do well to keep your hands off of me, _stranger_ ,” he warned. His bright green eyes smoldered to a menacing glower, and in his palm her small, albeit forceful, wrist trembled with resistance.

“You’re not just any nobleman, are you?” The question sounded more like an observation in her clipped tone. “Travelers, rich and poor, come and go here in Enbarr,” she paused briefly to study him once more, dwelling on the golden trimmings of his cloak, “but none ever look like you.”

Cichol balked, and his grip loosened with that bubbling sense of panic. The girl pulled back her hand.

“Your clothes milord,” she started again, nudging forward so they could resume their walk, “they look _old_.”

Baffled, Cichol wrinkled his nose. He instinctively raised up his sleeves, scanning the hem and the seams for any sign of fraying.

“Not like that,” she said, her voice still ringing with laughter, “I mean they look like they’re from a long time ago… You know, like the robes the Nabateans wear in the church paintings.”

His heart stopped for that fraction of a second — just enough to leave his complexion a ghostly pallor. Why didn’t he think of that? Why, when he left to roam the countryside and survey their dominion, did he not think to blend in better with humans? Now that he thought on it, the gold trimming, silken brocade pattern of his cloak, and the dark bluish hue appeared offensively out of place in a sea of burlap rags and undyed wool coats. 

“Don’t fuss about it now,” she chided him, albeit tenderly. “You’ll attract attention this way!” Her laughter trailed when he still, despite orders, fussed over his cloak and straightened his jacket. The two paused before a street corner farther away from the market, and the low-lying tension of their stand-off was all but forgotten.

“Come,” she started up again, “I want to show you something.”

For a young woman of her small stature, she was surprisingly strong. Or perhaps Cichol didn’t put up as much of a resistance as he would have liked. Well, none of it mattered now. She whisked him away, and he was once more winding through the streets past buildings he had never before seen. Enbarr had grown in the centuries he had abandoned it, and whether he liked it or not, she was his guide.

* * *

“I recognized the pattern on your cloak, and I immediately thought of this place.” 

Her voice echoed hollow in the domed chamber. The building was more like a skeleton propped up by cracked limestone ruins. Above them, the vaulted ceiling’s cornices still rattled with clouds of dust, trembling against every tiny sound that disturbed its slumber. For a moment, Cichol wondered if it was safe for either of them to be there. 

The girl stopped before what used to be a mural. ‘Used to be,’ Cichol mused, as only the ghost trappings of paint and luster remained. Yet he could still make out the faded outlines of a symbol — one that wound like a sigil over his coat like a flame.

“I know this place,” he said aloud. His eyes widened with surprise. The words came out effortlessly, without much thought or heed to what he had so carefully guarded. “There used to be a mural there… A fresco dedicated to Sothis.” He tilted his chin up at the wall where the mural used to be.

“Yes,” she said, her large, opal eyes once more falling on him, “that’s what the priests say.”

“Priests?” he pondered aloud. “The priests of the church visit these ruins?”

She shook her head. “Not of the church here, no, but priests from afar. They come with refugees, people pouring in from war-torn lands and... _far-off places_.”

“War?” he parroted the word in disbelief. Though quiet as he was, the ruins nevertheless trembled from the echoes of his voice. “What war? There hasn’t been a war in Fodlan for centuries.”

She eyed him curiously, as if mulling over his choice of words. “No war between kings… or _gods_ , for that matter.” She seemed to linger on the word for emphasis, facing the mural with renewed interest. “But people are lost. Bandits roam freely, and some smaller lords sacrifice many lives for their own petty squabbles.”

Cichol said nothing. He merely stared on with a guarded stoicism, unwilling to reveal any of his shock. What had he been doing all these years, wandering from village to village? Had he been blind all this time?

“I love coming here,” she said, snapping him out of his addled trance. “It reminds me of home.”

“Home?” Again the word echoed hollow.

“Yes, my old home… in the Rhodos Coast.” The warm smile he had seen in the church returned, but the same mischievous gleam in her eye stayed. It was such a brief yet nevertheless titillating exchange, almost as if they were trading secrets. “I was able to take many things with me, fortunately — a jar of seasalt being one of them that I sometimes give to my friend Jocasta.”  
Cichol nodded in understanding, but his eyes remained fixed on where the mural used to be. He tried to picture it: the faint details of what humans thought of Sothis whenever she visited them. 

“We had a temple dedicated to the goddess there too.” Her voice trailed as if in a sentimental reverie, indifferent to whoever listened or if there even was anyone who could listen. “I saw you and thought of that temple. A part of me hoped… well, it’s silly now.”

Cichol turned to her, stepping closer now that he was rapt in her story. “What is it?”

Unfailing in her habits, the girl fanned her hand across her mouth to stifle another bashful chuckle. “I was hoping _you_ were from the Rhodos Coast, and that you had come to bring news of my old home. I knew it wasn’t likely, and seeing you now,” she paused and eyed him from head to toe, laughing all the while, “I can’t help but wonder if you’re from another _time._ ”

His brow furled at her rather uncanny powers of observation. “What makes you say that?”

“Well, you _feel_ different. Like this temple. It’s in the middle of Enbarr, but it looks old, it feels old…”

For the first time that day, Cichol smiled. It was slight, like a subtle curl of his upper lip. “I didn’t realize I looked so old and dilapidated.”

“No, not like that!” she protested. The once coy smile gave way to a more earnest frown. She averted her gaze, wholly unable to level with him now that he pointed out her unintended slight. 

Though he took no small comfort in the jape, Cichol nevertheless felt his heart squeeze upon seeing her so downtrodden. “Then what is it like?” he asked more softly. He stepped forward and raised his arm. His hand palmed through the dust-lined walls, tracing the crumbling grooves with his fingers. “What am _I_ like?”

The question surprised her, to say the least. She seemed to brighten as he glanced over his shoulder to address her. Laying both hands flat over the skirt of her dress, the girl leaned her head with a pensive sort of look. 

“Many people find ruins scary. They worry that terrifying secrets are buried beneath, but…” She ambled closer, falling into step behind him as Cichol continued grazing his hand against the faint etches of the mural. “But really, I think they’re nothing more than old memories… old lives. They cling to what they can and watch silently as lifetimes pass them by.”

Something somber haunted her words: somber and true. Cichol felt it like a yoke on his shoulders. It tipped his head with an unbearable weight, lurching until his forehead pressed against the web-laden walls with a tired sigh. In that moment, his eyes fluttered to a close, and for the first time in years he wished he could see Sothis again. That tranquil smile by the gardens… He wanted nothing more than to return home.

“That’s how you feel to me.”

 _Strange way to put it_. And his thoughts were enough to cut off his reverie. The girl was now next to him, standing with a gravity that softened her otherwise lightless expression. 

“Cichol,” he announced. HIs name rang raucously in the otherwise hollow din of their surroundings. She took a step back, startled by the suddenness of the confession. “My name,” he clarified, turning to her with a heavy frown, “it’s Cichol.”

She gasped at first, taken aback by the weight of his revelation. But her shoulders were quick to roll with the long, protracted sigh, and soon the shock on her face smoothed back into the same tranquil smile Cichol had been searching for all these years. 

“My name is Hrönn,” she answered back. “Hrönn of the Rhodos Coast. It’s very nice to meet you, Cichol.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hrönn, pronounced fu-ren, is a Nordic deity and one of the daughters of Aegir. A friend believes that the JP naming of Three Houses is actually referencing this figure when they gave Flayn her name. I decided to bring it back for naming Cichol's future wife.


End file.
